Dear Readers

Coinciding with the World AIDS Day, we are happy to launch our third STI newsletter summarizing current STI key activities in the field of HIV/AIDS research and control. There is no need to underline the importance of the HIV pandemic and to stress that the highest burden of HIV/AIDS is located in sub-Saharan Africa. We are all aware of the dramatic dimensions of this key disease of poverty. Fortunately, many new tools and approaches for prevention and control/treatment or available and are ready to be used at large scale within the national control programs. One of the key challenges that needs to be highlighted at the World AIDS Day 2007 is that we need to strengthen substantially the efforts to carry all currently available efficacious tools more effectively to the people concerned.

This entails for example more detailed discussions on new approaches of providing the essential information to the right people at the right time or on access to counseling and testing as well as to well followed treatment. We also face too many situations where drugs are available through grants from the Global Fund against AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) or other major initiatives, but treatment so far predominantly only takes effectively place in the capital and large centers within the tertiary care level.

While we welcome all initiatives that ensure effective treatment, we deplore that not enough efforts are made to ensure sustainable treatment and monitoring (treatment effects, side effects, adherence, resistance dynamics) at the peripheral level where also the technical as well as human resources are facing substantial constraints. These days, the periphery, has become the center of most national HIV/AIDS control programs. It is in this spirit that our newsletter tries to provide insight into respective ongoing STI activities.
 
We welcome your critical reading and feedback and should like to exchange on your experience in similar or related fields. I wish you and enjoyable reading and also thank you for your contributions and collaboration.

Marcel Tanner
Director 

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